Juvenal Galeno e suas canções populares: reflexo do propósito educacional romântico sob os auspícios do espiritualismo eclético (1836 - 1889)

Abstract

Anxieties for making Brazil a nation have boosted the formation of intellectualized middle sectors capable of conducting the human formative ideal necessary for the so - called Brazilian civilizational project in the nineteenth century. The Brazilian histori ography records, for the period, several cases and actions of intellectuals and groups, which go well with what can be called an intellectual exercise as a political attitude. But there are cases in which the intellectual exercise was also an eminently edu cational attitude, given that the ideal of nationality pursued was imprinted by the civilizational codes only achievable by the formative processes, being these the press or the school. It should be noted that the period we are dealing with, here delimited from the ends of the Regency, registers several opposing forces. Among those based on the new ideas whose nuances were in the Illustration, we emphasize the romantic side strongly influenced by the Eclectic Spiritualism, French philosophical current estab lished by Victor Cousin. Brazilian romantic intellectuals, advocating the defense of Cousin's ideas, were able to establish a debate with traditionalism, alleging the need to construct the homeland, from the institution of its education, its culture, inclu ding literature, notably poetry, and, above all, , Of its history. It can be said, therefore, that some of these intellectuals delegated to themselves a social and pedagogical mission because in the said project of country they had a clear understanding of the forging of the new man with a new mentality, unraveled from the colonialist mentality. They developed, therefore, the figure of the intellectual educator well characterized like writer of mission. Many were the intellectuals and their defenses, howeve r, it is known that the ideal of romantic education, based on Eclectic Spiritualism, was part of the tonic and desires of all who launched this mission. The poet and folklorist Juvenal Galeno, with his literature, in the form of popular songs, is very well characterized as the intellectual who shared this mentality and who, therefore, made of literature its educative mission.